THIS IS A SHANNON AWARD PROVIDING PARTIAL SUPPORT FOR THE RESEARCH PROJECTS THAT FALL SHORT OF THE ASSIGNED INSTITUTE'S FUNDING RANGE BUT ARE IN THE MARGIN OF EXCELLENCE. THE SHANNON AWARD IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE SUPPORT TO TEST THE FEASIBILITY OF THE APPROACH; DEVELOP FURTHER TESTS AND REFINE RESEARCH TECHNIQUES; PERFORM SECONDARY ANALYSIS OR AVAILABLE DATA SETS; OR CONDUCT DISCRETE PROJECTS THAT CAN DEMONSTRATE THE PI'S RESEARCH CAPABILITIES OR LEND ADDITIONAL WEIGHT TO AN ALREADY MERITORIOUS APPLICATION. THE ABSTRACT BELOW IS TAKEN FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT SUBMITTED BY THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR. DESCRIPTION: The proposed project will build on two decades of research on medical diagnostic systems, initially conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, and now to be continued at Vanderbilt University. The project will develop new techniques to facilitate knowledge acquisition for medical diagnostic knowledge bases, including (1) tools to help physicians locate and extract information from full-text sources of medical knowledge, such as journal articles and textbooks, (2) tools to monitor the medical literature for new information potentially relevant to knowledge base creation and maintenance, and (3) tools to use patient records as an additional source of information for knowledge acquisition activities. An additional aim of the research plan is to demonstrate that the applicants knowledge acquisition tools and techniques can be generalized for use in a new application area--that of serving the Rare Disease Network at Vanderbilt University. The applicants believe that their research will contribute to the development of more useful, more comprehensive medical knowledge bases.